I think the punchline to the joke currently going around facebook is, ‘Get the housekeeper to do it, I’m off to roll in the mud!’. Which does resonate with me somewhat... However, what got me thinking about this post was a friend asking which of my horses had the highest IQ. I guess IQ is a human construction, and possibly not even a very useful one in terms of measuring who might be better at being a human....However, I reckon what was meant by this was which of your horses ‘thinks’ the most. I would say all of my horses are excellent at being horses and their HQ (Horse quotant) is high. However, even on this front, the lovely Desmund probably scores the lowest. He is an interesting horse and pretty darn trainable under saddle, but on the ground, and in the rest of his life, he is not always entirely with the programme. And I think this is because he has not really been asked to ‘think’ about his situation in a human world and how he might best deal with this. Here are a couple of examples. Every day I lead all three of my horses out of the field, down the road, round a gate or two, and then they each go into their stables. Tycoon and Garbanzo understand this deal, and helpfully make their way around the gate, turning, backing up, waiting (with Garbanzo occasionally trying to take my hat off if the whole thing is taking too long). If one of them gets left behind, or a rope gets tangled they try their best to sort the situation out without me having to show them what to do. Des, on the other hand, would still really like you to move the gate around him. Or him around the gate. But he has not yet learned that he could play some part in this situation and get himself around the gate. If there is a wheelbarrow in the way of where one of the Spaniards would like to be, they carefully negotiate their way around it, whether they are attached to me or not. Des, however, would walk blindly into it, over it, and through it, looking only vaguely surprised when the fork that was resting over it wacks him in his nether regions. I am having some issues with my field gateway at the moment, as it has begun to resemble a scene from the trenches. A few days ago, whilst trying to get the three of them round and through the gateway, I lost a welly and let go of the lead ropes in the intervening round of swearing. Tycoon and Garb both felt the ropes drop and stopped, Des on the other hand wandered off down the road – away from the stables and the other horses looking calmly at nothing. I have no idea where he was headed, but as every day for the past 3 months we have gone across the road to the stables, I was a little surprised. Now there may be something they were born with – Tycoon particularly can pick up on the intent of the person and is quite remarkable in terms of being involved in a task with you (as long as it doesn’t involve a quad bike). However , I don’t think Des was born dumb – I think he just hasn’t as yet learned to ‘think’. Most of his life in Portugal was managed for him; he lived 23 hours a day in a stable, he was lead to the indoor school, tied up tight, tacked up and leapt up on. Now, I hope I have been clear that there are many things about his start in Portugal for which I am infinitely grateful. This is not about knocking the way things are done at all, and under saddle he has been taught to listen to his rider and knows how to learn. However, this has not been translated to the rest of his life, and it is something which I am slowly chipping away at. The temptation to just manhandle him around a gate when the rain is lashing down and its pitch black is great. However, everyday, I try and present him with tasks like this in a way which means he has to work it out - and we are getting there. Yesterday, for the first time, I didn’t have to actually ask him to take steps backwards when the gate opened, but in unison with the other two he quietly stepped backwards to give it space. He is beginning to realise that there are things I am asking him to do, like lower his head to have the bridle put on, stand still to be mounted, or move around with me as I put rugs on, which have some logic to them. The tasks and the human are beginning to make sense to him. It is a pleasure to see some of these ‘lightbulb’ moments . And the benefit of this which I didn’t really see coming is that he is becoming a ‘softer’ horse. In his body and mind he is beginning to mellow (ok, maybe not at dressage events just yet...) and things he used to do, like butt your hand out of the way with his head or nip with frustration, are all disappearing without me addressing them head on. I think it was Mark Rashid who said, ‘How do you make a light horse soft? Make him think.’ (it’s not a joke by the way...). I also think this applies to the horse that has learned that humans will manage situations for them, and they just have to blindly follow on the end of the rope. This is why tasks like teaching your horse to stand on a box are so rewarding and also so frustrating – you cannot force your horse to do it, you have to teach him, and to teach him, he has to understand how to think and subsequently how to learn. N.b. None of this applies to training Dalmations.

Yesterday I was trying to reverse the trailer. I have only just learned about going forwards with the trailer, and going backwards is still something which doesn’t make perfect sense to me. Combine that with the fact that the Land rover kept getting stuck in the mud, and the clutch is going - the potential for me abandoning the whole set up where it sat was high. However, at the point where I was just about the chuck something at the windscreen, I decided to breathe, and try again. Who had ever promised me that reversing a trailer was easy? Well, maybe a few annoying people had said it was a piece of p***, but the realisation I had was that I was only ever going to get better by doing it. Making some mistakes and doing it again. And hopefully, somewhere along the way, if I actually thought about what I was doing instead of just swearing, I might be a little better at it. Someone posted on their facebook page a while ago that ‘A great rider is just a lousy rider who didn’t quit’ (I think it was a chap in the states). Well, in the main, I agree with him. I think the reason so many people come unstuck with riding, or getting good at anything which you love, is that they just don’t do it enough. There is always a reason not to ride – especially at this time of year. Any one of us could find a reason not to. Everyone who is working hard to earn enough money to ride is probably too busy. Or too tired. Or it’s too wet or too cold. Or we have too many other responsibilities. I understand this, believe me I do. I am as good as the next person at finding a reason not to ride when it’s raining, or when I would rather be tucked up in bed reading a book. Recently I have moved and the other person who keeps her horses at the yard been an eye opener. She is a humble, quiet girl, who trains differently to me but has a really nice attitude towards her ponies, and her understanding of what kind of animal they are. She is also a remarkable testament to hard work. She starts work every day at 8am, so come rain or shine, she rides one horse before work - getting to the stables at 6am. She finishes at 3.30 and comes back and rides one then. She works Saturday morning and Saturday evening, so rides all three of them in the gap in the afternoon. She then rides all three of them again on Sunday. She does not earn very much money, so every penny she has goes into these ponies. She just pretty much keeps going – and she doesn’t complain about it. ‘It’s my choice’ is her motto. Over Christmas I watched ‘Wild Horse, Wild Ride’ which is a sweet film about the Wild mustang challenge – where 100 untouched horses are given to riders/trainers for 100 days to train them to a stage where they can be showcased and then auctioned. The purpose being to show what remarkable riding horses these mustangs can make. Now whatever you think about some of the training techniques and riding, the one thing you can’t deny is the tenacity of some of these guys. Wyleen – a very blonde, brash, but completely fearless rider is unequivocal about it, ‘I don’t want to hear your excuses!’ As far as she is concerned, whatever gets thrown at you by life or your horse, just get your head down and get on with it. The one caveat which makes this simple message a little more complicated is that you really need to try and practice the right thing! Or, at least, something which is an approximation of the right thing. But, that is a blog post (or a hundred thousand page book) in its own right. It would be no good sitting in the Land Rover for four hours to just keep on reversing into the gate post. One has to keep on checking that what you’re practicing is actually progressing things – even if you find yourself down a blind alley now and again.